TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — On the University of Arizona campus and on the street you’re going to see a lot of electric bicycles. They are very popular but we talked to an emergency room doctor who says there’s a very strong possibility a lot of those e-bike riders will end up on his exam table.
It’s easy to see the e-bike’s appeal; you can find them for as little as four hundred dollars. The top grades will go as fast at 28 miles per hour out of the box. Some riders have learned how to defeat speed limiters and go much faster.
At Banner University Medical Center, Trauma Surgeon Dr. Collin Stewart sees plenty of e-bike riders, who’ve suffered plenty of trauma. He says e-bike accidents are often like bike accidents made much worse by the e-bike speeds.
“We'll see people with head injuries. Obviously, they can break their extremities, different broken bones, and things like that. But also, depending if they crash into something, they can also have injuries to their torso from either being thrown off and ejected to where they hit things.”
The American College of Surgeons says every year more than 20,000 people get hurt riding E-Bikes—and about three thousand of them get hospitalized—the surgeons group thinks a lot of E-Bike injuries do not get reported.
Head injuries are the most common type of e-bike injuries.
Only a third of those riders were wearing helmets.
The helmets riders do wear are often bike helmets rated to protect you in a crash at up to 20 miles per hour. They’re not protective enough for an e-bike going 28 or faster.
Dr. Stewart says he’s seen more and more e-bike injuries as more and more people buy them—and a lot of his patients are quite young.
“You don't give a younger child a driver's license to go out because they can't make decisions, and so this is essentially like riding a motorcycle for young kids. We'll also see people who are in the middle age range who maybe lost their license and they're actually using these e-bikes as their mode of transportation, where they can't drive a car, but there's no regulations on e-bikes.”
And without much regulation, it’s up to riders to take responsibility for their own safety and the safety of people they ride near.
